It is well known today that a wireless handset such as a cell phone can be equipped with a web browser to support requesting, receiving and rendering of web content. Like PC-based browsers, a typical cell phone browser will use Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) messaging or some variant of HTTP messaging (hereafter HTTP) to request and receive web content. For instance, the browser may send to a web server an HTTP GET request specifying desired content and may then receive from the web server an HTTP 200 OK request carrying the requested content.
In many cases, the content returned by the web server will comprise an HTML markup document or the like, which may include text, object-references, and formatting directives, among other elements. Each object-reference will typically point to an image file, music file, multimedia file (e.g., audio/video file) or other object at a particular location specified by a Universal Resource Indicator (URI). When the browser receives the markup document, the browser will then automatically respond to each such object reference by sending a respective secondary HTTP request or the like, in order to download the referenced object for presentation to a user. The browser will then present the text and objects in the manner indicated by the markup.